Over the past decade, online account systems, and/or other forms of computing system implemented account systems, have enjoyed a tremendous increase in popularity. Indeed, it is relatively clear that, very soon, at least in the United States, online account systems will become the standard source of account information, and the preferred platform/mechanism for performing financial transactions. Online account systems are associated with many forms of Financial Institutions. The most familiar are Banks, Savings & Loans, Building Societies, Credit Unions, Credit Card Companies, Stock Brokerages, Asset Account Firms, and Investment Firms.
Currently, online account systems allow the user to, among other things, check account balances, electronically track individual financial transactions, balance checkbooks/checking accounts, track expenditures, and create and manage budgets. In addition, one very popular capability of currently available online account systems is a bill pay feature that gives the user the ability to pay bills through the online account system, and thereby eliminates the need to write/print traditional paper checks, mail the traditional paper checks, and then wait for the traditional paper checks to be processed by the payee and/or clear the user's account.
Using a typical online account system bill pay feature, the user must first manually enter payee information for each payee, such as, but not limited to: the payee name; the payee address; the users account number with the payee; and, often, a user nickname for the payee, through a user interface screen and using a user interface device. Taking the time to enter this payee information can be quite burdensome, especially for users having multiple payees. However, in many cases, once the payee information is manually entered a first time, the payee information is then saved and automatically, or semi-automatically, applied for each future payment to that payee, typically by the user selecting the payee name, or nickname for the payee, from a list of payee names, or nicknames for payees.
Some online account systems also provide a recurring bill payment feature whereby, not only is the user spared the burden of manually entering the payee information for each payment to a given payee, but the user is also provided the opportunity to designate an amount of payment and a frequency of payment to be automatically applied. Consequently, using online account systems having this recurring bill payment feature, the user need only enter the data associated with a recurring payment, including, but not limited to, the payee name, the payee address, the user's account number with the payee, a user nickname for the payee, the amount of payment to be made to the payee, and the frequency of payment to the payee, a single time. Then a payment to the payee is automatically made at the indicated frequency, without any further input from the user.
As discussed above, the bill pay, and/or recurring bill pay, features of currently available online account systems represent significant convenience to the user. In addition, using the bill pay, and/or recurring bill pay, features of currently available online account systems there is less opportunity for the introduction of error because there is less manual data entry. Consequently, there is little doubt that the bill pay, and/or recurring bill pay, features of currently available online account systems are a valuable tool for users and a highly marketable feature for the financial institutions, such as banks, providing the online account system.
Indeed, the fact that, once the initial manual data entry is performed, the bill pay, and/or recurring bill pay, features of currently available online account systems are so convenient to the user often serves to keep the user tied to a given online account system, and financial institution, even when the user's needs would clearly be better served by changing financial institutions. This is because the prospect of manually entering all the payee and recurring payment information again for the new financial institution's online account system is viewed by many users as too daunting, tedious, and time consuming a task. Consequently, despite knowing it would be to their benefit to switch financial intuitions, many users stay with a current financial institution simply to avoid this data entry burden. As result, many financial institutions effectively hold users hostage using the users' own data, and the considerable inertia of convenience.